


Dogs and Cats Living Together, Mass Hysteria

by ladivvinatravestia



Series: Flash Fic [4]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghostbusters, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Ghosts, Gratuitous Monty Python references, M/M, author is a crazy cat person, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-11-26 03:49:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20923682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladivvinatravestia/pseuds/ladivvinatravestia
Summary: There's something strange in the neighborhood.





	Dogs and Cats Living Together, Mass Hysteria

**Author's Note:**

> For spooktober prompts "blood" and "spooky movie AU", whumptober prompt "gunpoint".
> 
> I wouldn't really call Ghostbusters a "spooky" movie, I think of it more as a comedy, and one whose humor has stood up remarkably well in the 35 (!) years since its release. It was, however, the only movie I'd seen on Den of Geek's list of Top N Spookiest Movies, so here we are. This is also the first Ghostbusters fanfic I have written since 1989.

The banquet is delayed because there is a ghost or something. There have always been rumours of the hotel guest who died (some say exploded) of overeating after a long-ago maitre d' talked him into eating one last wafer-thin mint, but that doesn't mean the hotel is actually haunted. Bucky doesn't even believe in ghosts.

Still, there's obviously something going on in the banquet room. A lot of crashing and banging. It has to be more than just a cockroach, which is what Clint saw Mr. Coulson telling the anxious banquet guests the exterminators are there for. There's a protracted shattering sound of glass breaking.

Clint and Bucky look at each other and then Bucky opens the service door a crack to see what's going on. The ballroom chandelier has come down from the ceiling and is now raining glass shards onto the floor. The three exterminators, clad in brown utility suits and heavy-duty work boots, are chasing something around the room, attempting to shoot it with the guns attached to their backpacks, apparently some kind of energy weapon. The something they are chasing is a green globular apparition, which dodges the beams and darts here and there, grabbing food from the now-overturned chafing dishes and gobbling it down. Bucky decides he's seen enough and closes the door hurriedly.

"I'm not sure we'll be working tonight," he tells Clint and the other servers.

~~

After that, the "Ghostbusters", as they call themselves, are seemingly everywhere. You can follow them on Twitter and Instagram. There are clickbaity articles like "Top Ten Looks Natasha Romanoff Rocked While Busting Ghosts" and less clickbaity articles like the Atlantic's examination of whether ghosts have the right to a trial before incarceration.

"Where are all these ghosts even coming from?" Bucky complains to Clint, after clicking away from an interview with Dr. Romanoff where the interviewer eschewed asking her about her degrees in psychology and parapsychology in favour of inquiring about her hair-care routine. "I've never seen a ghost in my life before this, and now you can make a whole business out of hunting them?"

There's no reply from Clint, and Bucky looks over to see that he's taken his hearing aids out and is watching Dog Cops with the subtitles on. Lucky is slumbering peacefully on top of Clint's feet, but Alpine agrees from his perch on Bucky's shoulder that it is, indeed, strange.

A couple days later, Bucky shows up to work only to be told by Mr. Coulson, grim-faced, that Agent Sitwell from the EPA has shut down the hotel for health violations relating to the ghost until further notice. Across the street, the HYDRA hotel, owned through a series of shell companies by Mayor Pierce, remains suspiciously open.

"Sorry, Barnes," says Mr. Coulson. "I'll open back up when I can, but in the meantime it might be best if you and Barton start looking for new jobs."

Damn. Mr. Coulson had been a good boss, and the job paid enough that neither Bucky nor Clint had needed to have a second job.

Bucky walks home instead of taking the metro so he can have longer to brood. Along his way, he winds up getting mugged at gunpoint, which doesn't improve his mood.

"Go ahead and take it," he says to the thugs, tossing his wallet on the ground. "I've got a whole ten dollars to my name."

They don't want his shitty old flip phone, and they either don't notice or don't recognize the value of his prosthetic arm, so they wave him along his way. They haven't bothered to disguise their faces. They must know that with all the other shit going down in this city and this country right now, he's not even going to bother pressing charges.

He's in a truly terrible mood when he gets home, and knowing that the feelings of anger he's experiencing are just masking anxiety doesn't help him improve his mood. he flings open the door to his and Clint's apartment to find Lucky whining near the door, his tail tucked and his head down, and Alpine hiding under the end table, ears flattened all the way back. A trail of bloody footprints leads into the living room.

"Clint!" Bucky shouts, dashing for the living room, all his own troubles forgotten. "Clint!"

Clint is not in the living room, and the trail of bloody footprints leads to his bedroom. Normally Clint and Bucky don't go into each other's bedrooms, but this is an emergency. He skids to a halt in front of Clint's bed. Clint is lying face down, one arm dangling off the side of his bed, but he's snoring away peacefully, his hearing aids on his bedside table.

"Barton, you asshole," complains Bucky. Lucky, who'd been right behind him when he dashed for Clint's bedroom, presses his nose into Clint's outstretched hand.

Clint wakes up groggily, scritches Lucky on the head, and then notices Bucky standing there.

"What's up, man?" he asks.

"I thought you were dead!" Bucky blurts. Clint can read lips, but it's not as precise as ASL.

"You thought what?" says Clint, so Bucky repeats himself in sign, even though he's not that great at it.

"Why would you think - " begins Clint. He sits up, reaching for his hearing aids, which gives him a view of the bloody footprints on the floor.

"What the shit?!" he exclaims, jamming his hearing aids over his ears. "Whose is this?!"

He stumbles sleepily out into the living room, following the footprints, and Bucky follows. The walls of the living room are now dripping blood.

Bucky grabs his phone and jabs the numbers to dial emergency services. He and Clint have instinctively gone into a back-to-back defensive pose, with Lucky trying to worm his way between them. Alpine can be heard hissing from the front hall.

"You need to call the Ghostbusters," says the emergency operator when Bucky gets through.

"Are you fucking serious right now," says Bucky. "This could be a murder scene or something."

"We've been getting one or two calls a week like this for the last month," says the operator, sounding bored. "Nothing we can do, sorry."

Bucky hangs up angrily and calls the Ghostbusters. Because of their ubiquitous catchy advertising jingles, he doesn't even have to google their phone number, which is good because it's beyond his phone's capabilities anyway. While he and Clint are waiting for them to show up, Alpine darts from the front hall all the way to Bucky's bedroom, where he retreats as far under the bed as possible. Lucky tries the same in Clint's bedroom, but only his head fits under the bed.

The Ghostbusters arrive, and all three are much more attractive in person than in their pictures, which is saying something, since the internet has chosen to declare them America's newest heartthrobs. More relevant right now, however, is that they are very serious about their jobs.

Wilson takes Clint's and Bucky's statements about the manifestation, flashing them a gap-toothed smile. Oh no. He's not just generically attractive. He's cute and charming. While Bucky stutters his way through his statement and Clint looks on, amused, Romanoff and Rogers troop through the apartment, waving diagnostic instruments at the walls and floor.

"PKE readings confirm it's a poltergeist," says Romanoff, having finished her survey.

"Class six!" Rogers adds, a big smile on his face. Both of them look much more excited at the prospect than Bucky feels.

"Okay, team, standard procedure?" Wilson asks them, and they nod. He pulls out a ghost trap and slides it along the floor.

"You two might want to stand back for this part," says Rogers, and Clint and Bucky retreat to the kitchen, each trying to hide behind the other while still getting a good view of the proceedings.

The Ghostbusters fire up their proton packs and then Romanoff speaks words of command in a language that might once have shared a common ancestor with Hebrew.

There is a bone-chilling screeching sound and the blood comes flying in globules off the wall and floor to coalesce into a form that looks a little like the green banquet room ghost, except a lot larger and a lot angrier. The Ghostbusters aim the streams of their weapons at the apparition, which twists and writhes and growls angrily in the same language before being sucked down into the trap.

Rogers uses his foot to close the trap, and then the room is back to normal. The trap glows a bit around the edges and rattles angrily. Bucky breathes a sigh of relief. Lucky comes bounding out of the bedroom, good spirits apparently restored, and barks once at the trap, which settles down.

"Okay, so about payment," begins Clint. He and Bucky look at each other, trying to determine whether they have enough funds in their shared household account to pay for this. Ghostbusting can't be cheap.

Romanoff and Wilson look at each other. Rogers is now seated on the floor where Lucky has climbed into his lap. Rogers gives Lucky all the scritches and praise he deserves, while Alpine meows jealously from the coffee table.

"Listen," says Wilson, "we're going to waive your fee on this one since this is the first job we've had to do in your building."

Bucky doesn't like the sound of that, and neither does Clint.

"Does that mean we're likely to have to call you again about the same thing?" he asks.

"Oh no," Romanoff assures him, putting a hand on his arm. "Once this guy is in our ecto containment unit he's not getting out. But sometimes where one ghost has found a place to manifest, others find it easier to come through from the spirit realm at the same location."

Clint and Bucky look at each other and Bucky swallows. His life is complicated enough without his apartment becoming a new landing pad for ghosts. He has a job or two to find, for one thing.

"But just give us a call if you have any more trouble and we'll come by right away," Romanoff continues. "Here, just give me your cell phone and I'll give you my number."

"You too, man," says Wilson, flashing Bucky another smile, and Bucky holds out his crappy old phone. Wilson doesn't make fun of him for it, though, just says, "I'm giving you my personal number. Don't hesitate to call or text me if you have concerns about ghosts or anything else."

Clint and Bucky stare at their phones after the three Ghostbusters leave their apartment.

"Did they just - " begins Clint.

"Pick us up?" Bucky finishes. They look at each other. "Yeah, I think so."

~~

A week and a half later and there have been no new ghosts. Bucky's having trouble finding anyplace that's hiring right now, since so many places are either rebuilding or shut down due to ghost activity, and he also hasn't found the courage to text Dr. Wilson, although he has spent a lot of time poring through clickbait like "Sam Wilson's Top Five Feel-Good Movies."

Bucky is reduced to looking through print want ads from a newspaper he bought in the local bodega when he spots a job ad that has to be a fake:

"Experienced ghost hunter wanted. Good salary, benefits included. Some nights and shift work required." The Ghostbusters' main phone number is listed as the contact.

Okay. He can call it and then he'll talk to Sam Wilson and they can see if they like each other well enough to go on a date or something. it can't be a real job, and even if it is, he's hardly an experienced ghost hunter. He doesn't think his two tours in Afghanistan count.

"Ghostbusters, what do you want?" asks the receptionist when Bucky phones.

"I'm calling about the job ad?" says Bucky.

There's a pause, and Bucky waits for the receptionist to tell him it's a joke, but instead what he says is,

"Oh, yeah! The job ad! Can you come in right away for an interview?"

Bucky's surprised, but not about to look a gift horse in the mouth. He agrees readily, then pulls his hair into the neatest ponytail he can manage, puts on his best interview suit (okay, it's his only suit), and head into midtown on the metro.

The Ghostbusters' headquarters are an old converted fire station, which is kind of awesome, actually. When Bucky walks in, the receptionist is buffing his nails and he looks up disinterestedly at Bucky. He is, if possible, even blonder and even beefier than Dr. Rogers, and his nameplate reads "T. Odinsson."

"I'm Bucky Barnes," says Bucky. "I have a job interview?"

"Oh yeah," says Odinsson, still sounding disinterested. "I have some initial screening questions to ask you and then you'll be speaking with Dr. Romanoff and Dr. Rogers. Please have a seat."

Bucky sits down.

"Do you believe in UFOs, astral projections, mental telepathy, ESP, clairvoyance, spirit photography, telekinetic movement, full trance mediums, the Loch Ness Monster, and the theory of Atlantis?" asks Odinsson, sounding bored. It's not clear to Bucky that he believes in any of those things himself.

As for Bucky, he knows what he saw, but he's still not sure what to think of what he saw.

"Hey, if there's a steady paycheck in it," he says, "I'll believe anything you say."

**Author's Note:**

> The language Natasha uses to command the poltergeist is Aramaic. The thugs who mug Bucky are, of course, Brock Rumlow and Jack Rollins, and if Bucky did try to make a police report, the paperwork would only get lost thanks to their willingness to do Mayor Pierce's dirty work for him. Steve is Ray Stantz, Natasha is Egon Spengler, Sam is a less-skeezy and more-charming version of Peter Venkman, and Bucky is, of course, Winston Zeddemore.
> 
> Visit me on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/ladivvinatravestia), where my asks box is always open to prompts.


End file.
